Simon Gagne, in his return to the Tampa Bay lineup from a concussion, scored just over a minute into overtime to send the Leafs to a heartbreaking loss on Tuesday night.

Tampa Bay Lightning netminder Dan Ellis keeps the sprawling Joey Crabb of the Maple Leafs from getting to the puck as Randy Jones watches from the rear.

By:Paul HunterSports Reporter, Published on Tue Nov 30 2010

Hard work wasn’t enough to prevent heartbreak for the Maple Leafs.

In a game that they looked to have under wraps, Tampa’s Martin St. Louis scored with a blast from the point with 8.7 seconds remaining in regulation time to tie the game at 3-3 as the Lightning rallied from a 3-1 deficit.

Simon Gagne, who had provided the screen on the St. Louis’ goal as he returned to the lineup from a concussion, then scored just over a minute into overtime thanks to a Luke Schenn turnover that set up a 2-on-1 break for the Bolts.

The 4-3 result was an unexpected finish to what had been an excellent game for the Leafs.

The hard-working home side nullified the Lightning’s speed, scored a couple of fluky goals — Nikolai Kulemin’s second of the game came after a weird bounce off the glass that caused Tampa goaltender Dan Ellis to vacate his net — and got excellent work from their special teams.

The phrase “excellent work” doesn’t usually appear in any sentence mentioning Toronto’s special teams

But this game, which ended a streak of three straight victories on home ice by Toronto, was completely contrary to form and the Leafs’ penalty killing was a large reason for that.

That much-maligned unit, ranked 29th in the league, was facing one of the top power plays in the game — the Lightning came in ranked fifth with the extra man — a Tampa group that featured the league’s leading goal scorer in Steve Stamkos. Ten of Stamkos’ 24 goals have come on the power play, which tops the league in that category, and almost all of them were the result of his intimidating one-timer.

But Toronto penalty killers did a superb job taking away that weapon. The Leaf forwards, most notably Fredrik Sjostrom and Tyler Bozak, were extremely aggressive at getting in position to take away the passes that Stamkos normally feeds on.

In two first-period power plays, Stamkos did not get a shot on net and the Bolts only tested Jonas Gustavsson three times during those advantages.

The Leafs jumped out to a 1-0 lead in that first period and could very easily have been up by two going into the break.

Kris Versteeg scored an odd goal from the corner, firing a backhand in the direction of the net that went off Tampa defenceman Randy Jones and got past a sprawling Dan Ellis in the Bolts’ net for his seventh of the season less than two minutes in. In the final minute of that opening frame, it appeared Luke Schenn had put the home side up 2-0 with a 45-foot wrist shot but referee Ian Walsh waved it off, citing Toronto’s Clarke MacArthur for goaltender interference.

MacArthur, however, hardly touched Ellis as he stood at the top of the crease and any contact was only because he was pushed backwards into the goaltender by big Tampa defenceman Victor Hedman.

Toronto’s potential for becoming disheartened was compounded by a Tampa goal early in the second that could have caused the Leafs to fold but they kept battling. Ryan Malone made it 1-1 just over five minutes in and while the goal did come on the Tampa power play it was, like Versteeg’s first-period marker, a bit of an odd one.

From behind the net, Malone tucked the puck in off Gustavsson’s skate as the goaltender came across his crease to his left post.

The Leafs grabbed a 2-1 lead midway through the second period with a power-play goal of their own. Kulemin — who’d earlier taken a couple of bad penalties — took a cross-ice pass from Tomas Kaberle while at the top of the right faceoff circle. Kulemin didn’t one-time it like Stamkos but he did fire a similar-looking laser. The Toronto winger stepped into the puck and whistled a shot over Ellis’ catching glove.

The Leafs called up winger Joey Crabb from the Marlies for this one and he picked up a point on Kulemin’s second goal that made it 3-1. Crabb dumped the puck in along the glass and it bounded in front, out of the corner, after Ellis had gone behind his net to play the wraparound. Kulemin raced to the puck that was wobbling in the slot and poked it in for his ninth of the season, one behind team leader Phil Kessel.

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